“Don’t look directly into it,” she warned. Too late.
“She tried to ascend,” Cleopatra Selene said softly. “Not to Rome’s heaven. Her own. She melted her diadem, her bracelets, even the gold from Antony’s sword. She forged a mirror —a concave disk of pure gold, inscribed with the names of forty-two judges of the Duat. If you stand before it at the rising of Sirius, the gold doesn’t reflect your face. It reflects your name in the stars.” private gold cleopatra
“What happens when they recover?” he asked. “Don’t look directly into it,” she warned
“Private gold,” the man said, in English as sharp as a scalpel. “Article 42 of the Antiquities Protection Law. No export. No private ownership. And this —” he gestured at the mirror, “—is the property of the soul of Egypt. Hand it over.” “Not to Rome’s heaven
A torch flared. Four men in linen suits and sunglasses—Egyptian State Security, the kind who didn’t arrest you so much as erase you. Their leader held a photograph of Doria. Of Lucian. Of the mirror.
She smiled—a crack in her royal mask. “It’s Doria. Doria Ashraf. I’m a Coptic art restorer at the Egyptian Museum. I found the papyrus three years ago, wrapped around a mummified cat. I’ve been hunting the mirror ever since.”
At the heart of the chamber, on a pedestal of black basalt, stood the mirror.